Willingness to Adopt Health Information Among Social Question-and-Answer Community Users in China: Cross-sectional...

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Information Science
• Public Health

Background:

• The COVID-19 pandemic heightened public demand for health information, increasing reliance on the internet.
• Social Question-and-Answer Communities (SQACs) have emerged as crucial platforms for enhancing public health literacy.
• Understanding factors influencing health information adoption in SQACs is vital for theoretical and practical applications.

Purpose of the Study:

• To extend the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology model for analyzing SQAC health information adoption.
• To identify key factors influencing users' willingness to adopt health information from SQACs.
• To investigate the moderating role of demographic characteristics on these influences.

Main Methods:

• A web-based questionnaire survey was administered to collect data.
• Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was employed to analyze influencing factors.
• Hierarchical regression was used to verify moderating effects of demographic variables.

Main Results:

• Performance expectation (β=.282), social influence (β=.238), and facilitating conditions (β=.279) significantly and positively impacted health information adoption willingness.
• Effort expectancy and perceived risk did not show significant effects on adoption willingness.
• Gender was found to have a significant moderating effect (P<.001) within the SEM.

Conclusions:

• SQAC users' willingness to adopt health information is influenced by performance expectation, social influence, and facilitating conditions.
• The proposed SEM demonstrates good model fit and explanatory power for user adoption behavior.
• Findings offer actionable insights for SQAC operators and health agencies to improve health information dissemination.